The state Legislature has approved a bill that would undo a precedent established in the Carson recall case, and potentially make it easier for politicians to defeat recall drives in the future.

Assembly Bill 2584 was drafted in response to the May ruling of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu, who held that Mayor Jim Dear’s signature withdrawal cards were invalid because they were undated and did not include circulators’ affidavits.

The ruling paved the way for Tuesday’s recall election in Carson, which Dear won by a vote of 58-42 percent.

Treu’s ruling conflicted with the secretary of state’s long-standing guidelines, which state that withdrawals required only a name, address and signature. Dear relied upon those guidelines in gathering his withdrawal cards.

The bill would restore the earlier interpretation rejected by Judge Treu. The recall proponents, led by former Councilwoman Vera Robles De-

witt, were outraged upon learning of the bill.

“It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card for elected officials,” said Chris Sutton, Dewitt’s attorney, who successfully argued the case before Treu. “It’s an entirely dishonest and fraudulent bill. It makes the process of recall entirely ineffective.”

Secretary of State Debra Bowen sponsored the legislation, which passed unanimously through both houses of the Legislature last month. In a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bowen argued that Treu’s ruling “places an extra, unnecessary hurdle in front of voters who legitimately want to remove their name from an initiative, referendum, or recall petition.”

The Carson recall was unusual because, as far as election experts are aware, it was the only case in which signature withdrawals made a difference in the outcome.

The recall proponents gathered more than 12,000 signatures in 2006 and 2007 seeking to remove Dear from office. Dear, in turn, gathered nearly 6,000 withdrawal cards from voters who said they wanted their names removed from the recall petitions.

The county registrar-recorder accepted the cards, and found 868 of them to be valid.

With the withdrawals figured in, the petition fell 86 short of the number needed to qualify an election.

In arguing that the cards ought to be tossed out, Sutton insisted they should meet the same standards as any petition, for which dates and circulators’ affidavits are required. Treu agreed, and his ruling gave the petitioners enough valid signatures to put the recall on the ballot.

Dear considered appealing, but dropped the idea when it was clear he could not stop the election.

“The judge created law that did not exist,” Dear said. “This legislation is going to clarify that so any future judge will not make the same mistake this judge made.”

Treu’s ruling affected only those petitions overseen by the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder. Patrice Salseda, the attorney who defended the county’s initial decision in the Carson case, said voters ought to be able to remove their names from a petition without much hassle.

“Maybe they signed because there was peer pressure,” she said. “If that person decides I’m gonna withdraw my name, they should have the right to do that.”

Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, D-Norwalk, carried the legislation for the Secretary of State’s Office, and said it would protect voters’ “right to freedom of speech.”

But Sutton argued that lower burdens on withdrawal cards would make it more difficult to qualify a recall for the ballot. He intended to write to Schwarzenegger to urge him to veto the bill.

“Gov. Schwarzenegger would not be in office if this law had been in place,” Sutton said. “(Former Gov.) Gray Davis would have gone out with the unions and gotten a bunch of withdrawal cards.”

Because the cards were undated in the Carson case, it was almost impossible to verify that they had, in fact, been signed after the petition, as the law requires. It was also impossible for a voter to withdraw a withdrawal by signing a second petition.

In one case, a voter had signed the petition, then a withdrawal card, then a petition again, then another withdrawal card, and then another petition. That signature was initially invalidated, then accepted after Treu’s ruling.

“The truth of the matter is, people just need to be more aware of what they’re signing,” said Fred Woocher, an attorney who specializes in election law. “You get a lot of people who will just sign whatever’s put in front of them. It just creates these unfortunate wars.”

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